Category Archives: Hans Baldung Grien

It’s fucking Monday, how completely dreadful, and to make matters worse, I have a hangover. The weekend seemed to have happened upside down, whilst I had a few pints with my bro and Al on Friday I was home by 10, already my weekend was ending. I attempted to recreate a donor kebab using a lamb chop, which was carefully sliced and seasoned and added to a pitta with fresh chilli, garlic and mixed leaves with a blob of mayo. Bastard didn’t quite work so I resigned myself to a bottle of wine which was enjoyed in front of a progressively pixilated game of snooker. I rounded my Friday off with a miniature rock-out session. By 3am I was asleep.

Saturday was written off, I poked some kipper into my face in front of an old Top Gear on Dave and staggered off to the superstore for the usual Saturday bout of consumerism. Saturday night was meant to be dinner with Myfwt, her sister and bro-in-law, the latter is turning 40 next week, poor sod, but his Friday meal at St. John’s had caused him malaise and Myfwt took it on herself to perform auntie duties for their nipper. Her intention was to return home later but she had drunk too many wines to drive…oh well. Fortuitously Frank was about and we were able to slot in a couple of impromptu ales at the local. This was most agreeable and I arrived back home in fine cheer fully perpetuated by the lack of a stinking great Cunt below my perfumed feet poisoning silence with his babooness.

And it was on this Saturday night that I invented ‘Proletariat Pizza’.

I’d been thinking about this for a while, how to make a fairly convincing pizza quickly and without much effort. This night I cracked it, and I’m going to pass the recipe on. Dead simple, mix tomato puree, olive oil, garlic, Tabasco with herb de Provence (bear with me) season and spread like butter on one side of lightly toasted pitta bread. Here it would be pretty much up to you to decide topping, but you can fuck off, it’s my recipe so do as follows. Cover the tomato base with ham, not thick cheap lumps of dead reformed pig, off the bone thinly sliced stuff as it crisps up in a most congenial manner, then sprinkle over this finely chopped spring onion and cover the whole shooting match in grated cheddar AND Parmesan (Parmigiano Reggiano specifically, anything else tastes like sick after drugs) and grill the fuck out of it.

The result is a pizza with a crispy base, doughy middle and a topping that will have you punching air as you chew and hum your approval… so good was it that I made it last night for Myfwt, it takes 10 minutes from start to finish. Bon appetite.

I got up lunchtime Sunday and made breakfast, Myfwt joined me and we set off at 2pm for the National Gallery. We met Andrea outside and went in to see the Art of Light: German Renaissance stained glass exhibition. Small but perfectly formed it was a fascinating, albeit, tiny, peek at stained glass’ heyday. Of particular interest to me were the drawings by Hans Baldung Grien and the wood engravings (incorrectly cited by the gallery as woodcuts) by Albrecht Durer, that had subsequently been used as models for glass panels. After a good beak we three departed and by 5pm we were in a small bar off Berwick Street supping wines and eating a board of olives, hummus, feta, prosciutto and chorizo. We were joined later by Sal and after a few bottles we four wandered through the murky neon blown back streets of Soho to arrive at an electric blue gay bar where we crept into a booth and ordered more drinks. This place was wonderful; Barbie and Ken dolls are tastefully attached to the ceiling, pretty gay men softly talking and caressing one another in soft blue black light. The toilets, ambiguous to gender, were so ridiculously clean and tastefully decorated they might as well have been in a lifestyle magazine. My three friends were the only females in the whole bar and I should imagine that I was the only straight fellow, however, the atmosphere was so congenial that complete strangers chatted to us, a couple of very well to do lads on leaving to bar hugged Myfwt and I as we smoked outside.

Needless to say by this time we were rather drunk and by 10 or so on our way home after avoiding temptation to do on elsewhere by Sal who was ready for a big fat night on the tiles. By 11 Myfwt was in bed the worse for wear, despite this, I made her Prol Pizza and we watched Jamie Oliver, he was doing stuff, fuck knows what, I could barely see.